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Tuesday, 11 September 2012

"Lone Wolf: The rebuilding of a Nu-Cast Gresley P2: Part 2"

One of the things I realized about this particular build of mine, is the potential the model has to be either very, very good, or very, very poor. For instance, I have been poring over the drawings to compare the P2s and the A4s as best I can, and one of the things which screamed out to me last week were the differences in the streamlined casing.

The exciting thing, however, was finding that there's not enough of a difference to make the use of an A4 front end, suitably cut and shut, unwarranted or unnecessary. In fact, carefully cutting into the whitemetal body and fusing plastic components could produce a more accurate P2 model, by virtue of the layout of the front end's opening doors being identical to the A4s. This also solves the previous problem of the buffers: the Hornby A4 buffers are a perfect match.

I've since ordered a few things I know I will need for this build, not least a Romford screw driver for the strange split axle heads that the Romford driving wheels have. The idea is to replace the centre driving wheels with a set of flanged driving wheels I already have, left over from my defunct A2/1 kit of yonks ago.

The cab has been cut and shut this weekend gone, but aggravatingly my camera is on the fritz. This I will try and sort this weekend! I will then test fit the cab to the running plate.

Flangeless cartazzi wheels left over from one of my many A4 Pacifics has been sourced from the spares box in order to build the new cartazzi frames below the Nu-Cast running plate.

It's going to be a long build but I am already much happier about it than I was when starting it. Less of the "what am I getting myself into" and more "I can do this".

The next task is to examine if my spare Hornby-made 5 pole motor and gearbox can fit in the body and above the frames, to replace the absolutely tiny Nu-Cast originals!